by J. F. Penn
Jamie moved swiftly across the room as the door rattled furiously. She opened the valves on the oxygen cylinders, twisting them to full capacity, hearing the hiss as they started to expel gas. Jamie couldn’t help but breathe deeply for a second, relishing the purity as it chased away the last of the hallucinogens from her brain. She found two bottles of ethanol and hurled them to the ground, the vapor from the absolute alcohol making her cough. Turning, she grabbed one of the heavy medical textbooks from a shelf and started to smash the glass jars containing the anatomical specimens. Jamie couldn’t help her tears as the liquid formalin released its contents and at the sound of breaking glass, Jamie heard the attempts of the men outside redouble in effort. Mascuria would be desperate to rescue his beloved specimens, his life’s work.
Twisted body parts plopped onto the floor in a wash of preserving liquid, and dissected fetus corpses joined them in a hideous soup of human remains. Jamie stepped carefully, not wanting to damage them any more. Where Mascuria had seen the deformed beauty of teratology, Jamie saw only the worship of suffering and deliberate cruelty. Nature would not have let these poor innocents live, and now she would release them, along with her daughter.
Jamie’s tears obscured her vision, as the formalin evaporated into the highly flammable formaldehyde gas. Now all she needed was a spark. Her eyes fell on her own leather jacket, with cigarettes and lighter in the pocket. She grabbed the jacket and rummaged through the pockets as the men outside broke the lock and the giant cabinet began to move. Jamie threw two of the large specimen jars at the base of the cabinet, then dropped to the floor and crawled under the sacking next to Polly’s body. She leaned out and with one arm flicked her lighter open, plunging the lever and creating a spark.
The air flashed around her and as her arm burned Jamie dropped the lighter, igniting the formaldehyde and the body parts soaked in the flammable liquid. The air itself seemed to blaze and a frustrated scream came from outside the door as smoke billowed up and out. Jamie knew it wouldn’t take long for the fire to reach their pile of sacking and together they would burn, a pyre of flame, just as Polly had wanted. Her heart hammered at the thought of dying this way but as she gathered Polly’s body in her arms and pulled her jacket over herself, she knew it was the only way. The heat surrounded them and she closed her eyes, breathing in the toxic smoke, hoping that she might be overcome before the flames licked her body and the pain began.
A smashing came from the doorway and suddenly the men were in, but the flames had taken hold now and smoke filled the room, even as some of it billowed out into the corridor. The fire spread quickly in the morgue, amplified by the gaseous accelerants. Jamie opened her eyes, watching the vague shapes of three men approaching and she prayed that they wouldn’t drag her alive from this place.
Mascuria was shouting desperately, his words barely audible over the crackle of flames, burning body parts dripping melted fat into sticky pools at his feet.
“No! My babies … Help me.”
He was picking up pieces of macerated flesh from the floor, hugging them to his chest and wailing in anguish. Jamie wrapped her arms tighter around Polly’s body, pressing her face to the girl’s back. As her lips met her daughter’s skin to kiss it one last time, she heard Polly’s voice in her head, clear as it had been when she had lived. ‘Dance for me, Mum’.
Chapter 27
For a moment, Jamie couldn’t believe it but then the voice jump-started her resolve, for in that moment, she knew she couldn’t just lie here and die. Polly’s death didn’t have to be her own end, it could be the beginning of a different life. If she died, the Nevilles could continue their sick practices and Mascuria might live to start a new collection. She couldn’t let that happen.
Jamie pulled the leather jacket tighter around her, and peered out from beneath its protection. She clutched her burned arm tight to her body, the pain sharpening her senses. As the men moved further into the room, she could see a way out through the open door, as long as she could stay out of sight in the billowing smoke. She crawled away from Polly, then turned and wrapped her in the flammable sacking, pushing the precious body back towards the flames, willing it to be consumed before the fire was controlled. Jamie didn’t want to leave her, feeling an emotional tug to what was left of Polly’s physicality, but she knew that her pragmatic daughter would have loved being part of bringing this evil to justice.
Still kneeling, Jamie grabbed another of the bottled specimens with a piece of sacking and hurled it toward the opposite end of the room. It exploded in the air from the heat, raining glass shards down and the smoky outlines of the men turned towards the combustion. In that second, she ran, ducking low to the floor and slipping out into the corridor. She coughed, choking in the smoky atmosphere, knowing that she had to get out. Jamie ran for the staircase towards the trapdoor and the labs above and suddenly saw a figure ahead of her in the smoke. It was Esther Neville, her slight figure stepping upwards towards her escape.
Jamie shadowed her up the staircase, remaining far enough behind that the smoke would obscure her form, but as Esther emerged through the trapdoor at the top, Jamie rushed the last few steps, diving for the closing gap and rolled out into the circular room. Esther turned at the noise and flew at Jamie, screaming in anger and frustration, a scalpel still in her bloody hand. The barking of the guard dog outside the room mingled with her sounds of fury, and Jamie could hear its claws scratching at the door, desperate to join the fight.
“You bitch, you’ve ruined it all.” Esther panted, her blade thrusts clumsy with anger. Jamie rolled away and scrambled to her feet.
“Why did you do it, Esther?” Jamie asked, as she circled, keeping her distance from the knife. Esther’s face was marked with blood, highlighting her cheekbones like murderer’s rouge and her teeth were tarnished burgundy. Her dress was stained with gore and chunks of wet flesh adhered to the sleeves, sticking in the folds. She stank of blood, sweat and sex and Jamie’s nose wrinkled at the odor that rose in waves. The pristine scientist was gone, replaced by this base creature marred with death.
“Did Jenna find out about the Lyceum?” Jamie asked. “Is that why you had to kill your own daughter?”
She saw a flash of what might have been regret in Esther’s eyes, but it was dampened immediately by her fury as the woman darted across the room, thrusting with the scalpel. Jamie spun and swatted her arm away, thrusting Esther in the direction she was moving, using the momentum to push her off balance. The knife went wide and Jamie danced away. Esther whirled around, ready to come at her again.
“Jenna was created here,” Esther snarled. “A product of my lab, the perfection of my process. She lived while others died as we refined the genetic structures, so she was always mine to destroy.”
Jamie thought of the monsters burning in the lab below, pieces of defiled flesh cradled in Mascuria’s arms. Those creatures had been Jenna’s brothers and sisters: no wonder she had wanted to rescue them in whatever way she could.
“She was going to reveal the lab’s secrets,” Esther spat. “She had some crazy idea that the specimens we created here had rights. She wanted to expose us, and I couldn’t let that happen.”
“What about her child?” Jamie tried to keep Esther talking, circling round, waiting for an opportunity to strike.
“An unexpected miracle,” Esther laughed. “Somehow her genes together with Day-Conti’s created something astonishing, for she should have been barren. Her death was too early, though. I wanted to bring her here for experimentation but she resisted me. I pushed her as we argued and she fell, but then I couldn’t leave her fetus. It has sparked a new line of research, so you see how nature rewards my work? How can it be wrong?”
Esther started across the room again, this time holding the scalpel with a firm grip, adjusting her stance for a lower thrust. The Rottweiler was going crazy outside the room, howling and barking.
“I will slash you until your blood runs freely and then let the dog hunt you in the fores
t.” Esther laughed again, and Jamie heard anticipated pleasure in her voice. “You aren’t worthy of the Lyceum anyway, and now they’re scattered, escaping the fire you have brought on us.” She crouched, light on her feet. “But the Lyceum will meet again, Detective, for there is an insatiable need for its extreme pleasures in this civilized world.”
Jamie watched the way Esther moved, feinting left and seeing how she adjusted her stance.
“And only you can bring them that?” she asked, keeping her eyes on Esther, watching the knife weave in the air.
“Only I am willing to, and they’re happy to pay handsomely for the privilege.”
Jamie let Esther advance further as she backed towards one of the plastinated corpse sculptures on the wall. Smoke was now curling up from the trapdoor and Jamie imagined Polly’s body consumed by the fire, finding freedom in the flames.
“What part did Christopher play?” Jamie asked, feeling the memory of his hands groping her own flesh.
Esther’s face wrinkled in disgust at the mention of her husband.
“His only use is to find appropriate people for the Lyceum within the networks of the upper class, those weary of the usual pleasures, those looking for something more - visceral.” Esther’s eyes glittered green, and Jamie saw that her addiction had taken her to the very edge of sanity. She felt drawn to that threshold too, feeling the battle of her police training against the vicious desire to end this woman’s life. Jamie wanted to grab the knife, slash it across Esther’s throat and let her stinking blood join that of the murdered Day-Conti, to hack at her body, each cut for one of the mutilated victims she had created in the labs.
Esther suddenly thrust the blade, aiming at Jamie’s exposed throat. With her back against the torso of the twisted sculpture of flesh, Jamie ducked away and the scalpel embedded deep into the sculpture, leaving Esther’s ribs exposed. Jamie moved, grabbing Esther’s body and pulling her forward, driving her knee hard into her solar plexus, winding the woman as she let go of the weapon. Jamie pulled it out of the sculpture as Esther sank to the floor. For a moment, she wanted to yank back Esther’s head and slash her throat, finishing the woman’s miserable life. But something stayed her hand, some sense of what she could allow of herself. Instead, Jamie thrust the blade downwards into Esther’s thigh and then twisted it as the woman howled in pain. Blood spurted from the wound, adding to the stains on her clothes. The dog barked ferociously, clawing to get in.
“That’s for Jenna,” Jamie said, and ran for the door, picking up the edge of the thick rug as she reached it. She pulled the rug about her body, using it as a shield for her soft flesh in case the dog tried to attack her. Esther looked up and in her green eyes, Jamie saw that she knew what was about to happen.
“No!” Esther screamed, and Jamie pulled open the door, letting the Rottweiler in, snarling and barking, teeth bared in vicious savagery. The scent of blood and gore on Esther was too much and the dog bounded across the room. She tried to get away from it but its teeth ripped into her leg by the open wound. The powerful dog began to shake her and Esther fell to the floor, the blood on her torso and face driving the dog wild. As it bit and wrenched at her exposed body, Esther’s cries grew weaker.
Jamie was momentarily transfixed by the brutal savaging and the sound of the dog feeding on Esther while she still lived. The animal was deep in the blood lust of the recent kill, but Jamie knew it wouldn’t be long before it turned on her. She dropped the rug and darted out through the door, slamming it closed behind her as the dog swung its head from the dying woman, baring its teeth in a bloody grimace, defending its prey.
Jamie stood shaking in the lab corridor, the pristine environment a strange juxtaposition to the unholy chaos she had witnessed down in the caves. But what had been created up here was a part of that dark underworld. Science walked a knife edge, and in the wrong hands it became a tool for evil: the legacy of Mengele still lived on in these labs. Jamie rested her forehead on the door, listening to the sickening sounds of the dog worrying at Esther’s body, an agonizing groan indicating that the woman was still alive. For a moment, Jamie felt revulsion at the fate she had left Esther to. Part of her wanted to find a weapon and go in to face the dog. She had sworn to protect people, to help them, to be on the side of good. Where did her actions leave her now?
Smoke started to seep under the door and she heard the dog start to bark and whine in fear. The noise of a massive explosion came from below, followed by a rumble deep under the earth. It was too late to save Esther now, and Jamie backed away from the door, stumbling away down the lab corridor. She heard the faint sound of sirens outside, alerted perhaps by the fire that must be billowing out of the building, the flames visible from the nearby village. Jamie felt her strength break within her. The long hours of the night, what she had seen in the depths of the caves, Polly’s final end, it all welled up within her and tears began to run down her face as her mind struggled to focus on escape.
She pulled open the final door, and sank to the floor in the loading bay as the flashing lights of the police and fire service vehicles filled the clearing in front of the lab. She closed her eyes against the glare of spinning red, hearing shouts as officers moved swiftly into position. She knew what she must look like, a victim of some kind of attack dressed in only a diaphanous wrap, bare legs and feet marked by ankle cuffs, her face cut and bloodied, her limbs burned and smoky black. She didn’t even have enough strength to say that she was a police officer. She just let one of the uniforms enfold her in a blanket and help her to a waiting ambulance as firemen streamed into the building.
Chapter 28
Jamie dreamed of deformed bodies emerging from specimen jars, the eyes of the abandoned fetuses open and accusing as their limbs charred and crackled in the flames. They dragged their stumpy bodies across the floor toward where she crouched in the billowing smoke, moans emanating from their tiny misshapen mouths. She felt the first touch, clammy like a frog on her bare leg as one began to pull itself up her body, wanting to fill her mouth with corrupted flesh.
“Jamie, Jamie, wake up. It’s OK, you’re safe now.” The voice pulled her from the nightmare and Jamie opened her eyes, clutching at the bedclothes with shaking fingers. Her first lucid thought was of Polly. Was her daughter safe?
Then Jamie remembered what had happened and her world dimmed and nausea washed over her. The best part of her had died and yet, after everything, she was still alive. She wanted to sink back into drugged sleep and forget, anything to dull the raw pain inside. But she remembered the voice in the flames and Polly’s desire that she dance again, and she forced herself to concentrate. Dragging herself mentally to consciousness, Jamie realized that she was in a small hospital room, wearing a surgical gown. Her head ached and her lungs felt squeezed in her chest, her breath ragged.
Blake sat by the bed, watching her, his gloved hand close to hers and Jamie felt comforted by his presence, for he understood the inherent darkness within people. She had pushed him away, but he was here now and she was grateful.
“Glad you made it out,” he said, smiling. “Sounds like you almost didn’t.”
His vivid blue eyes were intense and filled with concern. Jamie lifted a hand to touch his face, his jawline now smoothly clean shaven so he looked much younger. His eyes darkened and he leaned into her palm. She felt a connection with him, he had experienced horror and known loss and she didn’t have to explain herself with him. Blake had seen her vulnerability and it was a relief to know that he saw the truth.
“Jamie, I …” Blake started to speak but Jamie heard an edge of emotion she couldn’t face right now. His kindness would break her into pieces.
“What have you heard about the fire?” She interrupted him, wheezing a little.
“Only what’s on the news,” Blake said, and she saw understanding of the evasion in his expression. “Fire in a chemical lab spreads to the Hellfire Caves, sparking all kinds of rumors about what was actually going on that night. But the police say furthe
r investigations are needed before they reveal any more.” He raised an interested eyebrow. “So tell me the gory details, because they’ve taken all your personal effects so I can’t read them.”
Before Jamie could reply, the door opened and Missinghall entered, his face a picture of concern.
Blake stood up. “I’ll leave you two to talk,” he said. “You know where to find me when you’re ready, Jamie.”
He turned and walked to the door, nodding in acknowledgment at Missinghall, whose look of guarded interest made Jamie wonder what the two of them had talked about in the waiting area.
Missinghall sat down by the bed.
“I know you’re a senior officer and everything, but seriously, Jamie, what in hell were you thinking? Going in there alone was idiotic. You could have been killed.”
Jamie couldn’t help but smile at his concern, and the effort made her face ache. Her body felt so beaten up, and exhaustion sapped her strength.
“They had Polly’s body, Al, and I knew that the team wouldn’t get the evidence processed in time for the Lyceum’s meeting.” She thought of Esther Neville’s savaged body in the lab and Polly’s remains in the morgue below. “So what happened? Did you find anything left down there?”
“It’s all a big mess, and the Commissioner is trying to keep a lid on everything.” Missinghall shook his head. “But we found Esther Neville’s body ripped to pieces, and the remains of Edward Mascuria and several other men in the morgue downstairs. There were other body parts too, none recognizable, as well as a teenager’s skeleton, mostly burned to ashes.”
